The War Of Attention
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many are there in a meme?
The world of social media runs on the currency called ‘influence’ – and ‘attention’ is the tax we pay for it.
Our ability to get influenced and take action acts as a powerful tool to drive action. This is also what makes memes powerful.
For me, memes have brought a huge revolution in this country. The way we look at memes and react to them has helped us up to such an extent that we can’t even figure out how fucked-up we are!
Social media has invaded our lives and it has a major role in what we do every day. The ability to focus on one task without thinking about what’s going on the online world has become a rarity. The social damage is clearly evident.
The way we are consuming information has a lot to do with the kind of person we become.
What Are Memes?
As much as the internet is a tool for spreading information of the serious/grim kind, it has also allowed people to express and indulge in their need for frivolity.
Memes mock current events, political issues, and the ‘severity’ of the world. Initially, they were earlier mostly among young people, but slowly and steadily they have gained widespread popularity – among people of all groups, ages and classes.
In this modern era, where everything is just a few clicks away, we are tired of the expectations from our parents and family, college and work. It’s a world where we are receiving less validation for what we’re doing – and it’s making us doubt ourselves. Memes fit quite nicely into all of this. They fulfil our common need – and more importantly, it’s also a means to validate each other.
I’m not saying that our lives are harder than those of any other generation. But this is how we are dealing with it today, using the internet.
Why Are Memes Popular?
Memes have simple recipes: a random lazy person, impeccably good at cracking jokes, tries to make fun of a particular event and creates havoc on the internet. The meme culture is a medium to find happiness in the small things – and of course, to make fun of people and events.
The ease of making memes and sharing them (many of which contains heavy levels of irony) is what makes them so popular. When people get tired of being too serious, they can make fun of something – and this is a need which a lot of people have.
It is, in fact, a trending culture nowadays. At times, even your friendship is judged and measured according to the number of memes you have tagged your friends in.
The Problem
The problem arises when this culture of memes turns into an ugly game. The so-called harmless memes are used to target particular communities of the society, and often indulge in racism and body-shaming. And when they start hurting the sentiments of the masses, people react violently.
Often, photos of random people are shared on various platforms without the requisite permission with a caption of ‘tag a specific person to marry/date’ and what not. And social media netizens keep on sharing and spreading content like this while tagging more friends, as a joke or a fun activity. However, what they do not realise is that such content often gives rise to instances of racism, sexual abuse and many more.
These posts are pathetic and disturbing as well. The inappropriate message these posts give out to the public are totally neglected.
If you think that tagging your friends in such memes makes you look cool, let me tell you, it is not cool at all. You just make a fool out of yourself on the internet. So, please be a little kinder, people.
How The Meme Culture Has Impacted Us
What’s good for capturing ‘human attention’ is often bad for humans
Our social media feeds make us angry for a reason.
The kind of content delivered to us makes us instantly pay attention to it. It encourages us to observe conflicts, issues and pick sides even when we don’t want to – on topics about which we would otherwise have few opinions.
It creates biases and blurs our view towards one side. It’s nothing more than an opinion-serving poll machine where not all opinions are served equally.
Anyone who has scrolled through social media sites knows how, instead of giving out right info and wisdom, they give out biased, polarising and often inflammatory content. Such social media giants need to stop pretending that they are changing the world and admit that they are selling products which are, in fact, addictive and harmful for us.
What did we get from it?
We all felt so damn proud to shout #PyarEkDhokaHai, didn’t we?
Not many people know about the Syrian War, but just to show off – #PrayForSyria.
Whenever a rape case or attacks or scandals happen, we just put out a story to make people believe we care and know about things.
Ask people to take a stand over increasing rape cases, injustice, corruption and the never-ending list of issues – and we are not ‘free enough’ for it. It’s not really our problem; the government isn’t doing much about it; the system is like this only – and the bitching continues.
But, tell people that we need to shout #PyarEkDhokaHai , #AntiNational , #JNU or #HinduMuslim – and people are all ready to leave their work to change the world!
5,000 people gathered at a ground shouting out #PyarEkDhokaHai and what not (like seriously?).
More than millions of stories and updates are posted just to maintain our #SocialStatusQuo.
This is a huge issue.
But this is indeed the critical problem – social media already suppresses our voices.
The way social media and memes serves us content is not neutral and unbiased by any means.
As an article on Social Media Week rightly says, “The world feels more dangerous. Our streets seem less safe. The assault on our values is constant. The threats feel real. The enemy is out there — just check your feed.”
The ball is in your court
Young people shape the world’s largest democracy. 40% of the population here is under the age of 35 – and a million people turn 18 every month. As these people grow older, they will significantly reshape India and the world – politically, economically and environmentally.
The dreams are so big, the hopes are high. But are we really on that track? Are we doing enough to justify those statements?
It’s not time to stop consuming, but it’s time to consume the right one.
The choice is yours.